New Fire Emblem Scores All 9s in Famitsu Cross Review, No Perfect 10 — 5ch: ‘Same Score as a Trash Game, Says It All’

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The story

The scores for the new Fire Emblem (a Switch 2 exclusive) in Weekly Famitsu’s Cross Review have come out, with all four reviewers giving it 9 out of 10, for a combined total of 36/40 (90 on a 100-point scale). Famitsu has traditionally given special treatment to titles where multiple reviewers converge on a perfect 10, but this time, while all four reviewers matched each other at 9, nobody handed out a perfect score. On 5ch’s hardware/industry (Geha) board, users compared the score to other titles like Wolverine (35/40) and Patlabor, and the discussion also turned to how scores for past Fire Emblem entries have trended, along with skepticism about Famitsu’s review standards themselves.

Wolverine — 9,9,9,8

Fire Emblem — 9,9,9,9

Patlabor — 7,7,7,6

Source: ryokutya2089.xn--bl;og-d41c.jp / Original article here

What people said

8AnonymousSep 16, 2026 18:20
Guess that puts it below JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: All-Star Battle, huh
79AnonymousSep 16, 2026 19:11
Re: #8
Exactly this.
9AnonymousSep 16, 2026 18:20
FE Engage — 9,9,9,9

Same here!
15AnonymousSep 16, 2026 18:22
Re: #9
The way Famitsu doesn't seem to take scoring seriously is next level.
17AnonymousSep 16, 2026 18:22
Re: #9
Getting the same score as that trash game says it all, really.
11AnonymousSep 16, 2026 18:21
Famitsu gave Wolverine 35 out of 40
Convert that to a 100-point scale and it's 87.5
That's high lol
39AnonymousSep 16, 2026 18:36
Re: #11
Wolverine (called 'Val' here) is actually well-liked by real players — it's the low Metascore that's being questioned.
50AnonymousSep 16, 2026 18:44
Re: #39
Nah, it's nowhere near that level. Best case it's 'more average than you'd expect' — it feels dated and doesn't really have anything special going for it.
51AnonymousSep 16, 2026 18:44
Re: #39
That's Raiders you're thinking of. Wolverine kept getting flak even after release — the character's sexual preferences, using the voice actor's likeness for the model, the water effects, all of it. It's stuck in 'playable but a bit iffy' territory, though some disc[-related] activists are being way too loud and noisy about it.
13AnonymousSep 16, 2026 18:22
Three Houses — 9,9,10,9
85AnonymousSep 16, 2026 19:17
Re: #13
Ah, I see.
18AnonymousSep 16, 2026 18:22
The story's probably kind of mediocre. Even in early Metacritic reviews some people were saying the ending doesn't come together well.
90AnonymousSep 16, 2026 19:19
Re: #18
Maybe it's the sheer number of branching paths? Like, you can never experience the exact same story twice.
20AnonymousSep 16, 2026 18:23
Games like Patlabor that get blatantly low scores are actually useful as a reference — the only catch is they can only tell you whether something's trash or not.
86AnonymousSep 16, 2026 19:17
Re: #20
As for that company, Good Smile is kind of a wildcard player in this space — so even if their own titles get rejected, it's no big deal for them, and Famitsu doesn't have to pull punches; they just give the honest score.
96AnonymousSep 16, 2026 19:31
Re: #20
You really think there's substance to that? I'm not a fan of Patlabor since it's pretty shoddy, but let me say this as someone who can actually tell: they clearly cared about the mechs, and the designs are a faithful recreation of the originals. Also, From[Software] and whatever that Xeno-something game is have pretty shoddy mechs too — like they just bolted on a bunch of tiny blocks.
23AnonymousSep 16, 2026 18:24
Fire Emblem is kind of like Xenoblade — there's always something a little off about every entry.
33AnonymousSep 16, 2026 18:29
Re: #23
Both are third- or fourth-string titles [for their publishers], so small budgets can't be helped. That said, this new FE does feel like they put in real effort.
25AnonymousSep 16, 2026 18:26
The idea of an all-10s score is weird to begin with — there's no such thing as a game everyone finds fun.
30AnonymousSep 16, 2026 18:28
Re: #25
It's not everyone — you only need to satisfy those four reviewers to get all 10s.
46AnonymousSep 16, 2026 18:41
100 = 40 × 2.5
36 × 2.5 = 88

Why's it 90 points then? Is that some 'goki math'? (ゴキ is slang mocking PlayStation fanboys, implying biased/sloppy arithmetic)
54AnonymousSep 16, 2026 18:49
Re: #46
36/40×100=90
84AnonymousSep 16, 2026 19:16
Re: #46
Why'd you knock off 2 points?
94AnonymousSep 16, 2026 19:23
Re: #46
Uh… everyone gave it 9/10. You don't even need to do the math — it obviously averages out to 90.
64AnonymousSep 16, 2026 18:56
Silent Hill's coming out? Isn't it flying way under the radar?
68AnonymousSep 16, 2026 18:59
Re: #64
It releases next week but it's sitting at #800 on Amazon [sales rank], so yeah, nobody's talking about it.
73AnonymousSep 16, 2026 19:03
Something like 10,9,8,9 would actually look more interesting as a score spread.
76AnonymousSep 16, 2026 19:04
Re: #73
I figure a Famitsu '10' is really an 8 or lower in real terms — 9,9,9,9 is basically the max you'll ever see.
81AnonymousSep 16, 2026 19:13
Shadow Dragon (remake) — 9,8,9,8
New Mystery of the Emblem — 9,8,9,10
Awakening — 9,9,9,9
Fates — 9,9,9,9
Shadows of Valentia — 9,9,10,9
Three Houses — 9,9,10,9
Engage — 9,9,9,9
87AnonymousSep 16, 2026 19:17
Re: #81
Even for Famitsu, it's sketchy whether they're really playing these and scoring them for real. Compared to the others, Shadow Dragon is honestly at a level where it could've gotten a string of 7s.
88AnonymousSep 16, 2026 19:18
Re: #81
That's remarkably consistent.
93AnonymousSep 16, 2026 19:22
Re: #81
What even is this… I wonder how Genealogy of the Holy War scored back in the day — the system was probably working at least a little back then.

Re: #86
So the conditions for an honest score seem to be:
○ It's a publisher Famitsu/Kadokawa won't suffer any consequences for being truthful about
○ The game is bad enough that anyone who plays it would notice
Only when both line up do you actually get a real score.
101AnonymousSep 16, 2026 19:35
These scores are just boring now, is this M-1 [the comedy competition] or something? Guess they don't do the thing anymore where each reviewer's personality shows through with a spread like 9,6,9,3.
102AnonymousSep 16, 2026 19:37
Re: #101
That only happened back when guys like TACO X were still reviewing.
106AnonymousSep 16, 2026 19:39
There's always plenty to gripe about in any given FE compared to other FEs, but it's almost never actually a bad game overall — they always manage to make some part of it fun.
108AnonymousSep 16, 2026 19:41
Re: #106
Nah, Sacred Stones, Radiant Dawn, and Shadow Dragon are rough. Though Radiant Dawn feels like a god-tier game, at least up until partway through.

Background and Key Points of the Discussion

In Famitsu’s Cross Review, four reviewers each score a game out of 10, for a combined total out of 40. An “all-perfect” result — where every reviewer gives a 10 — is exceedingly rare in the feature’s history and has traditionally been treated as a special honor. This time’s total of 36 (9 points × 4) technically converts to 90 out of 100, a high score on paper, but the thread’s attention went instead to the fact that not a single reviewer awarded a perfect 10, with users comparing it to Wolverine’s past score (35) and to scores from earlier entries in the series, while also voicing distrust in Famitsu’s scoring standards themselves. Famitsu’s numbers don’t always line up with how a game is actually received or how well it sells after release, so readers are cautioned against judging a game’s quality by the score alone.

*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Hardware/Industry (Geha)) thread “Switch 2-exclusive Fire Emblem docked by Famitsu, no perfect scores for anyone! Is it trash?“.

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